Ray LaMontagne on Learning to Love Music Again

Perhaps it's naive for us to believe our beloved singer-songwriters operate independent of their craft. Or in other words: just because they sing of love, loss, and falling on hard times, there's no way they actually feel that way, right? Not quite: Ray LaMontagne, who has written some of music's most heartfelt, soul-baring material of the past decade, was so down on himself after his last round of touring, he wasn't even sure he could continue. Thankfully for us, he chose otherwise. "I started writing again and everything had a new light on it," he said of the genesis of Supernova, his new album due tomorrow. The soft-spoken LaMontagne was nothing if not open and forthcoming when he rang up ELLE.com on a recent afternoon and broke down his new album, recording with The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, and why he no longer feels as if each show is a fight.

It must have been a draining process to complete Supernova. I hear you'd work for up to 15 hours at a time when writing the songs.

That's what I have to do to get things done. I have to make myself available for whatever creative force that there is. What you call the muse or whatever. You have to be available to receive the stuff. If you're not, then it's just not going to happen. I have to punch in just like everyone else does. And then stay in that place and make myself available to receive ideas and hopefully make something that's artful.

How do the songs typically come to you? In fits of inspiration?

I sort of collect ideas, little bits and pieces, all the time. Before I got on the phone, some new little thing popped into my head, a little melody. I was moving furniture and I got this little thing with a certain phrasing on it and I thought, 'Oh, I better get this down or I'm going to forget this.' I record things on my iPhone and I just put it away. Because I get this stuff all fuckin' day long. But they're not all great and they all don't make me grab my guitar and want to record it. But when I know, I know. I've been doing it long enough at this point to know if it's something like, 'OK, I've really got to stop what I'm doing and go grab this before I lose it.'

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Many were excited to learn you'd tapped The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach as producer for the new album. How did that come together?

I've just been a fan of his, a fan of The Black Keys. Their first record came out a little before Trouble, a couple years before, I think. And so right from the beginning I was like, 'Wow, this is great.' And I was always getting their new records and listening to them. And when I put out Till The Sun Turns Black they had just made that first record with Danger Mouse, Attack & Release. And that's when [Dan and I] met. I think I called him just to tell him what a big fan of his music I was. And I was kind of stunned to realize he liked the stuff I was doing, which I didn't expect. Every time either of us would put out a record we'd get a phone call or a text saying 'Good work. Heard your new stuff. It was great. We should do something together.' And it just happens, every year or two years, we'll get a little flurry of texts or calls to do something. So I actually called Dan about getting a referral for an engineer. And then in that conversation we came to trying to do it together. I think it was just fortuitous that we could finally do it. .

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The new material is clearly still Ray Lamontagne but you can definitely hear Dan's swampy vibe.

That's why you work with other people. Because you want their ears in the room. That's how great records get made. Everybody had creative ideas and thoughts they wanted to throw in there. And some of it I knew immediately, 'Ah, that's not going to work' or we'd share a glance across the room like 'Nah!' If there's something I don't agree with or I know it's going down the [wrong] road than I just say it. We're all grown-ups. It's all give and take. But sometimes everyone would be like 'Ah, that's great! What's that thing you were doing? Do that again!' That kind of stuff is what makes a great record.

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I'm thrilled you decided to make this record. I know you were toying with the idea of quitting altogether.

I realized and figured out what was happening in my head. For the longest time, it was hard to get up there and play. Especially someone like me who that stuff didn't come naturally to. At least in my own head. I'm not someone who likes to go to parties. I'm not someone who likes to be in a room with a lot of people. I can do it; I'm much better at it now than I was then. But that all took a lot of time. Each show was like this fight; I had to somehow get through this battle every night. And I was using those feelings that you have of not belonging or people maybe not liking you or you have to prove yourself to people… I dunno, it had this aspect of a rumble sort of every night. And it just got to be exhausting. And after that last big round of touring I just felt like 'I just can't do this anymore. I can't feel like this night after night after night, feeling so exhausted.' It was weird.

So what changed then?

I took a little while, six months maybe, where I didn't really pick up a guitar. It was unhealthy for me— physically, mentally, everything. I wasn't doing very well. It was such perfectionism, wanting every [show] to be perfect, to be better than the last night. At a certain point I just realized, it's unhealthy to approach it that way. Maybe I need to approach it from a place of more joy. I know I love to write songs and I've been busting my ass for years and I've got a good, solid fan base at this point. It's not a rumble anymore. I'm not going out into a club with just my acoustic guitar playing in front of a rock band trying to earn five fans out of 2,000. Those were the rumble days. Now 12,000 people show up to hear me. Cause they like my music. It was sort of a slow revelation. But once I figured that out then it just allowed me to feel good about it again.

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